Africa: see you, see me

The influence of african self-representation on contemporary Africa photography

a photography exhibition curated by AWAM AMKPA

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This exhibition uses photographic practices in Africa to draw

attention to the ways in which Africans represent themselves, and the

growing influence of these self-representations in shaping general

contemporary modes of photographing Africa.

Africa: See You, See Me portrays the history of African photography and its

influence on non-African imaginings of Africa and the African diaspora in

all their diversity.

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Africa: See You, See Me is organized in 3 parts. The first section features

studio portraits of Africans seeking to write themselves into the urban

landscapes to which they have migrated. It presents African photographers

as they tamed, adapted and subverted the framing devices and photographic

conventions bequeathed them by their former colonial masters. The black

and white photographs by Meissa Gaye, Seydou Keita, Vandupuye, Ricardo

Rangel, Okhai Ojeikere, Mamadou Mbaye and Malick Sidibe illustrate a

tense dialogue between the photographer and the photographed as they

collaborate in inscribing African spaces and ―selves‖ into photographic

texts. They signify fantasies of self-hood, using costumes, make up,

hairstyles, textile backdrops and theatrical poses to perform subjectivities of

colonized places and postcolonial spaces. Other themes in this section

include the structures of African cities, societies and communities in

formation, and representations of ―looks‖ outside the studio from

photographers in very region of the continent. This part of the exhibition

also includes photographs of some of Africa’s anti-colonial heroes who

hoped for genuine liberation. Their images have been fragmented to

symbolize the broken promises of African independence. Yet, rather than

constituting a pessimistic retrospective, these pictures represent

deconstruction as a prelude to reinvention in the 21st century.

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The second section showcases early ethnographic portraits that imagined

Africa as a wilderness peopled by Europe’s primitive ―Other.‖  We have also

used the strategy of re-reading these photographs to draw attention to them

as objects within the history of photography. That history was itself a

significant product of an industrialized world that defined not only progress,

but also constructed those at the center and peripheries of such progress in

certain ways.

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The final section highlights contemporary photographs of Africa and

Africans by non-African photographer who share a dialogic relationship

with African artists. Thus, their work has expanded both African spheres of

influence and multiplied the spaces in which Africans are photographed as

subjects of history.

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